NYPost

MEMO TO LEFTY WHINERS: SHUT UP, ALREADY

By ANDREA PEYSER

November 29, 2001 -- THE squabble over military tribunals is giving me a headache.

Thousands of our countrymen were slaughtered in their workplace. Our nation is at war. Yet from the yelps emitted from pundits and politicians who claim disproportionate access to our airwaves and brain waves, the biggest menace America faces today has nothing to do with hijackers.

Our greatest threat, they say, isn't anthrax or smallpox or a well-placed nuclear bomb.

The yelpers would suggest that the major scourge facing our shores has nothing to do with foreigners who abuse our nation's famously suicidal hospitality as a means to destroy us.

No. The flavor-of-the-month bogeyman dominating leftist conversation is the military tribunal.

President Bush wants tribunals. John Ashcroft praises them. Europeans hate them, which is all right with me.

The average American isn't nearly as exercised. He knows that a judicial system capable of elevating Johnnie Cochran to celebrity status as a reward for turning O.J. Simpson's murder trial into a civil-rights circus perhaps isn't the best protection against a larger threat.

It should surprise no one that The New York Times editorial board opposes tribunals.

But it is disturbing when the usually sensible columnist William Safire shades facts to support his rabid opposition to them.

On Sunday, Safire praised Spain's reluctance to hand over eight accomplices to the Sept. 11 atrocities because the United States plans to "ignore rights normally accorded alien defendants." He selectively ignores Spain's primary beef with America - Spain doesn't want to give us the terrorists unless we guarantee none will be put to death.

Did Americans die in World War II to let Europ e dictate our laws?

Left-wing lightweight Bill Press bleated on CNN's "Crossfire" that our government's detention of several hundred terror suspects amounted to "racial profiling" - because none had "blond hair and blue eyes." How does he know?

If you want the truth about profiling, look at Monday's Wall Street Journal. It reported that the FBI for a decade looked the other way as a U.S. Army sergeant of Arab descent trained soldiers for Osama bin Laden - on U.S. soil.

Ever sensitive to the rights of our guests, U.S. officials "had to steer clear of the mosques" in their fight against terrorism, an FBI agent is quoted.

This is death by political correctness.

There is precedent for our government taking bold steps to protect its citizens during times of war.

And make no mistake, your life depends on it.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

Answers

this is the first time I have ever heard the Libertarians called Lefty whiners.

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

They've been called worse, but this was printed in a paper so they had to clean it up some...

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

Diane, I may have missed something, but what do Libertarians have to do with this?

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

Peter, all my libertarian friends are totally against what the President is doing with his military courts and secret tribunals. We either have a consitution that protects us all or we don't. Have you actually read the "Patriot Bill"??? I have and I find all these "special presidental orders" and the bill that was never read to be rather scary for ALL of us, not just our "visitors".

-- Anonymous, November 29, 2001

NYPost

ABSURD ASSAULT ON ASHCROFT

By JOHN PODHORETZ

November 30, 2001 -- SOME Democrats, liberals and civil libertarians are going to pieces. You can sense a kind of deranged relief in their factually challenged, emotionally overwrought and politically suicidal assault on the administration's prosecution of the war on terrorism.

Two months of common cause with President Bush and the rest of the country were as much as they could take. They could only stomach two months' worth of believing that the United States had more to fear from the terrorists outside the country than the Republicans inside the country.

The assault being waged on Attorney General John Ashcroft for supposedly shredding the Constitution would be comic were it not such a sad revelation of the hunger for division among the elites in a nation that has found genuine solace in unity.

And everything they're carrying on about - everything - is nonsense.

Pop quiz:

Question #1: How many of those held in U.S. jails since Sept. 11 can have their phone calls with their lawyers monitored by the Bureau of Prisons?

If you were only to read the headlines and pay glancing attention to the nattering of the critics, you would think 5,000 non-citizens were subject to this regulation.

The actual number: 12.

These are the so-called "silent dozen," the men the Justice Department apparently believes are al Qaeda agents. They have reportedly refused all cooperation with the authorities. In an effort to ensure that no more American lives are lost, Justice wants to know what it is they have to say when they do speak. Nothing that is said can be revealed to anyone anywhere without the explicit permission of a supervising judge.

Question #2: How many of those thousands taken in after Sept. 11 are currently in federal lockdown? Once again, judging from the hysteria, you might think the number is four digits long.

The real number: 53. Every one of them has been afforded due-process rights under the Constitution. The feds believe they may know more than they're letting on, and in a time of war following attacks that killed more than 4,000 people, the Justice Department would be derelict in the extreme if it did not explore every area of doubt to keep the nation safe.

Some find this an objectionable notion. David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center told CNN: "It's one thing to say, 'I'm willing to give up my liberty for security.' But most of the changes are targeted at a vulnerable group, at immigrants . . . And so the political calculus is easy: Let's give up their rights for our security."

Excuse me, Mr. Cole, but we New Yorkers have all given up freedoms in the wake of Sept. 11 - immigrants and non-immigrants alike.

The first freedom, FDR said, is freedom from fear, and that has been sacrificed not just here in New York but throughout the United States. Our freedom of movement has been restricted, and an entire neighborhood in this city basically placed under military rule.

That's what happens during war, when parts of our own nation have become a war zone. Two months after Sept. 11, Democrats and liberals seem in danger of forgetting that. America is a war zone - and the enemy is not John Ashcroft.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, who is rapidly on the way to winning the dubious distinction of being the most obnoxious member of the U.S. Senate, said on Wednesday, "If the attorney general loses any more credibility with the Judiciary Committee, he will have a real problem on his hands."

No doubt Ashcroft is quaking in his boots. Actually, the attorney general has far bigger matters to contend with than the injured pride of Patrick Leahy, whose complaint that he and the Senate were not adequately consulted about the administration's approach is belied by his own vote to give the president the authority he needs to fight this war.

Do Democrats really want history to record that what they did in the war effort is attack the president and his administration as they attempted to save the United States from al Qaeda?

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2001